Elysium Or Tartarus? What Does The Motor Trade Advertise?

Is The Motor Trade Heaven or Hell To Work In?

In most cultures there is a good place and a bad place, our society generally recognises the places as heaven and hell, but none so aptly describes the places at opposite ends of the spectrum as Greek Mythology, with Elysium or the Elysian Fields being the place of harmony and peace and Tartarus being the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked.

The Motor Trade used to be an attractive end destination, and if you worked hard a career for life. Today though the figures are worrying, less and less 16-19 year olds opting for Motor Trade related courses, favouring instead the more flowery options of media studies, leisure & tourism or the social sciences. The knock-on effect for an aging and diminishing Motor Industry is that there are fewer and fewer people available to replace those leaving or to allow for growth.

There are consequently two options open to this sector, the first which currently seems unlikely, is to learn to cope with fewer staff than needed, meaning a real sense of multi-tasking or adapting technology to cope. Realistically most technology currently employed in the Motor Trade is pretty cutting edge; few businesses make use of labour or time-saving technology.

So the option we are left with is to make the business more attractive as an end destination.

If you join the Army, you stand a higher than average chance of being killed in your job, certainly higher than working as a technician, but I regularly see adverts, TV and Magazine, encouraging applications, for someone to “be the best”. Now, this might well be rose-tinted advertising, but it is advertising nevertheless.

The Motor Industry needs something like this….

Every manufacturer spends a fortune on advertising its products, and rightly so, given the money spent on making them in the first place. All these adverts have one thing in common, be them Bentley or Suzuki, portraying a lifestyle that owner drivers may want to aspire to and consequently end up buying.

But if there is no-one to sell or maintain the vehicle what is the point? Where are the “be the best” style adverts, encouraging school leavers to seriously consider the motor trade? Where are the adverts saying this is the best industry in the UK? Where are the adverts saying “The Motor Trade Needs YOU”?

Until the industry takes staffing as seriously as customer engagement then the cycle to Tartarus will continue. And the motor trade will end up a destination for no-one!

After all if the Motor Trade wants to portray itself as the Elysian Fields of the UK employment market, everyone needs to know about it, or else it will continue to suffer from fewer and fewer applications.

So come on Motor Industry start advertising for what YOU WANT as well as what you think your customers want.

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Comments (2)

  • Hi congratulations - your post has been selected by DriveTribe Lifestyle Ambassador for promotion on the DriveTribe homepage.

      3 years ago
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